Berthold Lubetkin: Life in London

Lubetkin, a Georgian‑born architect who settled in London in 1931, founded the Tecton practice and quickly became a leading voice for socially engaged modernism. His early London work included the Penguin Pool and Gorilla House at London Zoo, which announced a new, constructivist‑inflected language of curves, ramps and exposed structure.​

In the 1930s he turned this ambition toward housing, arguing that good design and new materials could transform everyday life for ordinary urban residents. Highpoint, commissioned by office‑machinery magnate

Sigmund Gestetner, became his clearest built manifesto for modern communal living in London.

Highpoint I: Modern Living as Prototype

Highpoint I (1933–35) was the first of the pair, built on one of the highest sites in London at Highgate, giving the project both its name and its panoramic views. Designed by Lubetkin with structural engineer Ove Arup and constructed by Kier, it was an early and sophisticated use of reinforced concrete in British housing.

The block is organised as a double‑cruciform plan: eight flats per floor are arranged on a plan that maximises cross‑ventilation and sunlight, with the long wings oriented for optimal daylight. This configuration, combined with strip windows and long balconies, allowed living rooms to open towards the sun and views, while service areas were pushed to the cooler sides.

Formally, Highpoint I presents a light, almost weightless white volume lifted on pilotis‑like columns, with an open ground floor revealing the structural grid. The receding top storey, continuous balconies with steel folding windows, and carefully proportioned vertical stair towers produce a calm, rational elevation that impressed international figures such as Le Corbusier, who praised it as “an achievement of the first rank.”

Internally, the building re‑examined domestic life in detail: flats were equipped with central heating, stainless‑steel sinks, built‑in refrigerators, laundry chutes and generous glazing, all unusual in British middle‑class housing of the mid‑1930s. The shared amenities extended into landscaped gardens, communal facilities and meticulous circulation design, making Highpoint I one of the most advanced apartment blocks in Europe at the time.

Highpoint II: Luxury, Drama and Contrast

The success of Highpoint I led Gestetner to commission a second block on an adjacent site, completed as Highpoint II between 1936 and 1938. Local opposition, higher costs and changed ambitions meant that the scheme was drastically reduced from an initial 57 flats to just 12 apartments and a penthouse, shifting its focus from enlightened mass housing to a smaller set of luxury dwellings.

Where Highpoint I is pale and planar, Highpoint II is more sculptural and opulent, its dark brick façade sharply contrasting with its neighbour’s gleaming white render. Materials inside the second block include marble, pine and extensive tiling, coupled with glass bricks to illuminate staircase towers and common areas.

Highpoint II’s apartments are large maisonettes, generally four‑bedroom, two‑bathroom homes arranged over two floors, with the best units enjoying double‑height living rooms and elegant oval staircases. Lifts in Highpoint II open directly into the apartments rather than onto shared corridors, a gesture that underscores both privacy and a sense of arrival more akin to a hotel or private house.

One of the most striking details is the entrance canopy supported by paired Greek‑style caryatids, a surreal and almost playful classical reference beneath a modernist block. Lubetkin’s own penthouse at the top pushed this playfulness further, combining rustic planks, cow‑hide furniture and a curved roof vault painted as a sky, turning the roof into a stage set above the disciplined geometry below.